The Government may be accepting its defeat in the Supreme Court graciously overall, but David Davis was in a rather dismissive mood when he responded to Labour’s questions about the ruling in the House of Commons this afternoon. The Brexit Secretary gave a statement to the House explaining that ministers would publish ‘within days’ a bill that would give the Government the legal power to trigger Article 50. Both in the statement and in his responses to questions about it, he repeatedly told the Chamber that it would be a ‘straightforward’ bill. Meanwhile the Government had already offered MPs plenty of scrutiny of the Brexit negotiations, and the Prime Minister had given the clearest speech on her negotiating position that Davis could think of.
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So why, his response to the Opposition suggested, was Labour complaining? As Davis finished responding to Keir Starmer, he argued that ‘I really don’t think the honourable gentleman has advanced the knowledge of the House that much, but I look forward to the contributions of other members’.
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